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Browns to raise white flag Sunday

BEREA, Ohio — The Pittsburgh Steelers have the Terrible Towel. This Sunday, the Cleveland Browns will have the white flags.

Seriously.

The Browns announced on Wednesday on the team’s offficial Facebook page that fans who attend the game against the Steelers will receive an inflatable flag, which just happens to be white. (It does have the team name and orange helmet on it.)

The inflatable flags will be given away by Ticketmaster.

The Browns, who are 2-8 and headed for their fifth straight losing season, know how this looks, or perhaps sounds, but the promotion is Ticketmaster's, not theirs -- though it is at their stadium.

Perhaps this is what happens when a team loses 16 of 17 to its “rival,” including the past four in a row. It has reached the point that the Steelers admitted that they have stopped looking on the Browns as a rival; former Steelers linebacker Joey Porter said that several years ago.

Included in the many Cleveland losses was an embarrassing shutout on Christmas Eve, and last season, when the Browns put Colt McCoy back in the game after James Harrison tried to drive his helmet through McCoy’s jaw.

Now comes the white flag.

Word spread quickly on Twitter, where fans were either laughing or aghast at the notion of the flag being white.

"Unreal. White flags?" wrote one fan. And he was among the kinder folks.

"Do they come with paper bags, too?" wrote another.

The Free Dictionary online defines the white flag as a “white cloth or flag signaling truce or surrender.”

And it goes back a ways. Slate reported that historians from ancient China and Rome wrote of soldiers using white flags to surrender. The tradition is believed to have started with the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 A.D.), though Tacitus mentions the white flag in his Histories.

The Geneva Convention recognizes the white flag, and the Italians have guidelines that mention the white flag as an indication of surrender talks.

Most recently, Iraqi soldiers waved white handkerchiefs when surrendering to US Forces in the first Iraq war.

The Browns aren’t surrendering, but one of their sponsors wants their fans to wave the white flag.

Only in Cleveland.

Molon labe

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. George Orwell

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Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you 1. Jesus Christ, 2.The American G.I., One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

Following days of criticism, the Browns have decided to cancel a promotion to hand out white flags to fans before Sunday's game against the rival Pittsburgh Steelers. Because white flags symbolize surrender, the giveaway seemed to imply the Browns were giving up against the Steelers, who have won 16 of the past 17 games between the AFC North foes.

Browns spokesman Neal Gulkis said in a statement on Saturday that the team scrapped the idea ''in the best interests of everyone. It is something that was intended to be fun for our fans and that they could rally around, and we regret that some didn't perceive it that way.''

The flag giveaway was poorly received by many Browns fans and even some players.